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BLAINE CLUB OF COLUMBUS. 



PEN PORTRAIT 

OF 



JAMES G-. BLAINE. 



In writing even a two-colnmn sketch of a great man, I snppose that it is essential 
that, one shonld begin at the birth of the individual celebrated, although in a life so 
active as Mr. Blaine's has been, to do this is to record commonplace information, while 
important occurrences may be displaced. I did not happen to be in Washington county, 
Pennsylvania, on January 31, 1830, when Mr. Blaine was bom, and it was not my for- 
tune to be a playmate, schoolmate, or collegemate of his, but from "reliable sources," 
as the newspaper men say, I am enabled to state that Mr. Blaine's boyhood was much 
like other men's. He had the same troubles, the same quarrels, the same successes, the 
same youthful sorrows, the same disappointments. It is only phenomenal men who 
have no childhood with the stone -bruises, the chapped hands and the bloody noses of 
the country boy. I believe Mr. Blaine (although it makes not the slightest difference 
with the man) comes from fine old Eevolutionary stock ; that his great-grandfather was 
a Colonel in the Pennsylvania Line in the Revolutionary War : that he lived in that 
grand Cumberland Valley, whose golden fields of grain and bright green meadows charm 
all beholders to the present day ; that the Blaine family is still well remembered in the 
lovely village of Carlisle ; that Colonel Blaine was the intimate friend of General Wash- 
ington (or at least as intimate as that old aristocrat ever allowed a friend to be) ; that 
he was Commissary-General of the Northern Department of Washington'* army ; that 
he advanced from his own means and from contributions obtained by him from his 
friends, large sums of money toward purchasing supplies for the army during that terri- 
ble winter at Valley Forge ; that Washington attributed the preservation of his troops 
from absolute starvation to the heroic and self-sacrificing efforts of Colonel Blaine — these 
are facts, I believe, susceptible of proof. But Colonel Blaine is not a candidate for the 
Presidency, and his great-grandson is. Mr. Blaine gets his middle name (Gillespie) from 
his maternal grandfather, a pioneer of distinction in Western Pennsylvania. Fortu- 
nately or unfortunately there is no record of young Blaine except that contained in the 
family bible, before he arrived at the age of thirteen, but I have no doubt that he was 
as bright as his schoolfellows and fully as mischievous. I forgot to say that his father 
lived in the borough of Washington, and was Prothonotary of the county. At the age 
of thirteen, in the year 1843, the young boy entered Washington College, from which he 
was graduated at the head of a large and distinguished class in 1847, when he was only 
seventeen years old. 

BLAINE'S YOUTHFUL DATS. 

From an old collegemate of Mr. Blaine's, an of&cer of rank and character in the rebel 
army, I have obtained some interesting points regarding the youthful days of this dis- 
tinguished man. At the college, with two or three hundred students from all sections of 
the country, Blaine was from his first entrance a leader. Endowed with a splendid 
physique, he was foremost in all athletic sports. He is not remembered as a hard stu- 
dent, who burned the midnight oil. It was not necessary for him to do this, as he 
learned everything quickly and easily, and his standing in his classes was always among 
the very first. In the annual commencements and the fj-equent contests of the rival lit- 
erary societies of the college he was never conspicuous as a debater or wrangler, but he 
was known and acknowledged as the power that managed and controlled all these 



4 



things. Goethe has said : "One builds his talents in the stillnesses and builds his char- 
acter in the storms of the Tvorld." 

To the new boys and young freshmen Blaine was always a hero. To them he was 
uniformly kind, ever ready to assist and advise them, and to make smooth and pleasant 
their initiation into college life. His handsome person and neat attire ; his ready sym- 
pathy and prompt assistance ; his frank, generous nature, and his brave, manly bearing, 
made him the best known, the best loved, and the most popular boy at college. He was 
the arbiter among younger boys in all their disputes, and the authority with those of his 
own age on all questions. He was always for the under dog in the fight." Like most 
college boys, he had his sobricjuet. Owing to the fact that he was possessed of a some- 
what prominent, though shapely, proboscis, he received the appellation of "Nosey 
Blaine," which clung to him all through his college life. His was one of those noses 
that would have been the pride and admiration of Napoleon I., and would doubtless 
have ranked high and gained great glory among other prominent noses, whose owners 
were selected by Napoleon to form the shining ranks of his favorite generals, as a promi- 
nent nose was considered by him as a true indication of genius and courage. After the 
usual term at college he graduated with distinguished honor, and carried with him into 
the world the enduring affection of all those who knew him and with whom he was 
associated in his alma mater. 

CARVING HIS OWN FUTURE. 

From this point in life Mr. Blaine began to carve out his own future. In those days 
the young college graduate did not loaf about home, a village beau, smoking cigarettes 
and devoting most of his time to his hair — at least Blaine didn't. He struck out at once 
to seek his fortune. It was a very lucky strike for him, for if he had not struck out as 
he did, and had not gone to Kentucky, and had not located near Millersburg, he might 
never have met Miss Harriet Stan wood, a woman who will " do him good, and not evil, 
all the days of his life." But of this again. 

Mr. Blaine, after he left college, went to Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky, and became 
one of the professors in the Western Military Institute. In this school there were about 
450 boys. A gentleman now living in Washington (who was also, by the way, an offi- 
cer in the rebel service), was a student in this school. He well remembers Blaine, and 
describes him as a thin, handsome, earnest young man, with the same fascinating man- 
ners he has now. He was very popular with the boys, who trusted him and made 
friends with him from the first. He knew the given names of every one, and he knew 
their shortcomings and their strong points, and to this day he asks about this boy and 
that who went to school at the Blue Lick Springs, then a very popular watering-place. 
My friend says that Blaine was a man of great personal coarage, and that during a 
bloody fight between the faculty of the school and the owners of the springs, involving 
some questions about the removal of the school, he behaved in the bravest manner, 
fighting hard but keeping cool. Revolvers and knives were freely used, but Blaine only 
used his well-disciplined muscle. Colonel Thornton F. Johnson was the principal of the 
school, and his wife (both most excellent, well-bred and highly-cultured persons) had a 
young ladies' school at Millersburg, twenty miles distant. It was at this place that 
Blaine met Miss Stan wood, who belonged to an excellent family in Massachusetts, and 
she afterwards became his wife. Blaine, after an experieuce of a year or two, discov- 
ered that he was not born to be a school teacher, and he returned to Pennsylvania and ^ 
studied law, but never practiced it. In 1853 he removed to Maine and there began a 
career that has made him to-day the most talked of and the most popular man in the 
country. 

BLAINE AS AN EDITOR. 

It was in Portland that Mr. Blaine first became an editor. I have often thought that 
a great editor, as great perhaps as Mr. Greeley, was lost when Mr. Blaine went into poli- 
tics. He possesses all the qualities of a great journalist, and I have heard him say a 
dozen times that he will never be entirely happy until he is at the head of a great news- 
paper. He has a phenomenal memory, and there is no quality more valuable in journal- 
ism than this, as you very well know, Mr. Editor. He remembers circumstances, dates, 
names, and places more readily than any man I ever met, and it is this wonderfully 
available memory that makes him such a ready speaker and such a charming companion. 
He has also great quickness and accuracy of judgment, another excellent and indispen- 
sable quality in journalism. He writes as readily and as strongly as he speaks, and 
very rapidly. In many respects he resembles Mr. Greeley as a writer — he goes straight 
to the point and wastes no time in painting with pretty words a background for his 
thoughts. His other qualities for journalism are, he is courageous, he is fair-minded ; 
he grasps and weighs the events of the day, and finally, like all good j ournalists, he is a 
good husband and father and a good fellow. 

Mr. Blaine held his first public office in 1858, when he was elected to the Maine 



5 



Legislature. He had already achieved distinction as a public speaker in the Fremont 
campaign of 1856. He was five times elected to the Legislature, and in 1861 and again 
in 1862 he was chosen Speaker of the Honse, in which position he exhibited the same 
peculiar fitness for a presiding officer that he showed as Speaker of the National House 
of Representatives, though it must be confessed that, in the latter office, he was a little 
too oppressive and autocratic. 

ms FIRST TERM IN CONGRESS. 

In 1863 Mr. Blaine was first elected to Congress. During his flrst term he'gave him- 
self up mostly to study and observation, but in the Thirty-ninth Congress he began to 
be felt, and from that time to the present he has been foremost in all legislation. He 
hafl an aptitude for legislative business that few possess. He sees the weak and the 
strong points in a bill, and his judgment is so quick and accurate that he is as ready 'to 
take his position in a minute as most Congressmen are after a day's reflection. No doubt 
Mr. Blaine has made, like every other man ever in Congress, a good many speeches for 
home consumption, but in the last ten years he has done none of this. He has rather 
avoided this sort of public service, and has taken instead an active practical participa- 
tion in the business of Congress. It is hardly worth while to follow Mr. Blaine through 
his fourteen years' service in the House. He always commanded the attention of the 
House, and before he had been three years a member he ranked with the highest asTa 
debater. With him in the house were Thad. Stevens, Ben. Butler, Schenck, Allison, 
Colfax, Banks, John A. Bingham, Boutwell, James Brooks, Conkling, Dawes, Delano, 
R. B. Hayes, George W. Julian, Scofield, and other well-known names. Before the close 
of his second term he had that angry controversy with Conkling, since become so fam- 
ous, in which, for the firet time in his life, Conkling got a dressing which did him good. 
All your readers will remember that of the Forty -first. Forty-second, and Forty- third 
Congressses, Mr. Blaine was Speaker. His quickness, his thorough knowledge of parlia- 
mentary law and of the rules, his firmness, his clear voice, his impressive manner, his 
ready comprehension of subjects and situations, and his dash and brilliancy, made him 
a great presiding officer. He managed that most turbulent of all bodies with an iron 
hand. His management of his own case when the Mulligan letters came out, was 
worthy of any general who ever set a squadron in the field. For nearly fifteen years I 
have iooked down from the galleries of the House and Senate, and I never saw, and 
never expect to see, and never have read of such a scene, where the grandeur of human 
efibrt was better illustrated than when this great orator rushed down the aisle, and, in 
the very face of Proctor Knott, charged him with suppressing a telegram favorable to 
Blaine. The whole floor and all the galleries were wild with excitement. Men yelled 
and cheered, women waved their handerchiefs and went ofi" into hysterics, and the 
floor was little less than a mob. The later life of Mr. Biaine is familiar to all. His 
transfer to the Senate, his prominence as a Presidential candidate in 1876, the sunstroke 
on that unlucky July day, his defeat at Cincinnati, his prominence in the public/eye 
in the Senate, his admirable political management in Maine recently, and his present 
distinction in the hearts of the American people — your readers know all these things as 
well as I. 

Mr, Blaine, with those who know him, is the most popular of men. The charm of his 
manner is beyond expression, and nobody comes within the circle of his presence that 
is not overcome with his fascinations. With his great brilliancy he has that exquisite 
ahow of deference to his companions, a sort of appeal to them to verify or deny his 
words, that is very taking. He is also a good listener, and has a familiar way of speak- 
ing one's name, and of placing his hand on one's knee, that is an agreeable salve to 
one's vanity. There is no acting in the heartiness of his manner. He is an impulsive 
man, with a very warm heart, kindly instincts, and generous nature. ^ He is open 
frank, and manly. 

BLAINE'S COOLNESS. 

One element in his nature impresses itself upon my mind in a very emphatic manner, 
and that is his coolness and self-possession at the most exciting periods. I happened to 
be in his library in Washington when the balloting was going on in Cincinnati on that 
hot July day in 1876. A telegraph instrument was on his library table, and Mr. Sher- 
inan, his private secretary, a deft operator, was manipulating its key. Dispatches came 
from dozens of friends giving the last votes, which only lacked a few of a nomination, 
and everybody predicted the success of Blaine on the next ballot. Only four persons 
besides Mr. Sherman were in the room. It was a moment of great excitement. The 
next vote was quietly ticked over the wire, and the next announced the nomination of 
Mr. Hayes, Mr. Blaine was the only cool person in the apartment. It was such a re- 
versal of all anticipations and assurances that self-possession was out of the question 
except with Mr. Blaine. He had just left his bed after two days of unconsciousnejjs from 
sunstroke, but he was as self-possessed as the portraits upon the walls. He merely gave 



6 



a mnnnur of snrprise, and before anybody had recovered from the shock he had'written, 
in his firm, plain, flnent hand, three dispatches, now in my possession — one to Mr. Hayes, 
of congratulations ; one to the Maine delegates, thanking them for their devotion, and 
another to Eugene Hale and Mr. Frye, asking them to go personally to Columbus and 
present his good- will to Mr. Hayes, with promises of hearty aid in the campaign. The 
occasion affected him no more than the news of a servant quitting his employ would 
have done. Half an hour afterwards he was out with Secretary Fish in an open car- 
riage, receiving the cheers of the thousands of people who gathered about the telegraph 
bulletins. 

Charming as Mr. Blaine is in ordinary social intercourse, it is in the family circle that 
he is at his best. No man in public life is more fortunate in his domestic relations. He 
is the companion and confidant of every one of his six children. He is of the same age, 
and they fear him no more than they fear one of their own number. Mrs. Blaine is the 
model wife and mother, and more is due to her strong judgment, quick perception and 
heroic courage, than the world will ever know. Mr. Blaine, as already stated, has six 
children. The eldest. Walker, is a graduate of Yale College and of Columbia Law School, 
in New York. He is a member of the bar in New York, Maine, and Minnesota. He is 
now in St. Paul, in the office of Governor Davis. The second son, Emmons, is at the 
Cambridge Law School, having graduated at Harvard two years ago. Both sons show a 
wonderful aptitude for politics, and their political knowledge is rather remarkable. The 
youngest son is James G., Jr., a noble, generous, manly boy of eleven, who is the picture 
of his father. The three daughters are named Alice, Margaret, and Harriet. „ ,y 



BLAINB'S house in WASHINGTON. 

Mr. Blaine's house in this city is large and handsome. It is one of a block of four — 
the three others being occupied by Fernando Wood, Governor Swann,. of Maryland, and 
General Van Vleit, of the army. General Sherman lives two doors o^. Mr. Blaine's 
house is of brick and brown stone, and is four stories high. It i^ furnished with great 
good taste, elegance, and comfort. The walls are covered with pictures, mostly rare 
engravings. Mr. Blaine's taste runs to engravings, and he is constantly picking up por- 
traits of distinguished characters. In his house on Fifteenth street you can see portraits 
of the great actors on the world's stage in all ages. The walls of his dining-room are 
ornamented with crossed muskets and sabres and old pistols, grouped upon a shield. 
These are souvenirs presented by friends, and no doubt each weapon* has a history. Mr. 
Blaine's work-room is at the top of his house, where letters and papers come in by the 
bushel every day. The table is packed full of letters answered and unanswered, and 
busy clerks are hard at work trying to keep up with the vast accumulation. Probably 
Mr. Blaine receives more letters than any six Senators in Congress. It is his custom to 
spend as much time as possible in this work-room. He is a tremendous worker, and can 
write more letters in a given time than anybody I ever saw. He has a shorthand writer 
always at his elbow, and he dictates every day a large amount of work.| , 

I have scarcely room enough left to say that, physically, Mr. Blaine is the perfect man. 
You may see him almost any day striding along the avenue, going to or coming from the 
Capitol, with the strength of a giant. He is a strong man and a good walker who can 
keep up with him. He bounds up the steps, two at a time, talking and laughing with 
his companion. He is wonderfully preserved, and is just in the height of full physical 
strength. He does not know what fatigue is, and a session of fifty hours without a 
break turns him out as fresh as a lark, while nearly all his colleagues are badly used up. 
He is in appearance a very striking man. Large, full, straight, and erect, an immense 
head, gray beard cut close, and hair fast whitening, and indeed nearly white, and some- 
what thin on the top of his head, and a fresh, eager, zealous face. This is as near as I 
can come in describing a man who is the first to attract attention wherever he goes. ^ 

H. J. Ramsdkix.™ 



{ 



The position of Senator Blaine on the currency question 
is well understood. He is in favor of letting the currency 
alone, and will oppose any and every effort to either demone- 
tize silver or destroy the legal tender notes. The position of 
Secretary Sherman is thus referred to by the Chicago Tribune, 
the leading Republican paper of Illinois : 

In Ms last annual report Secretary Sherman proposed and arged the 
demonetization of the whole volume of legal-tender greenbacks, and as 
he is also in favor of demonetizing silver he would strip the people of the 
United States of all legal-tender money except gold, of which there is a 
wholly inadequate supply in this country. This alarming and revolu- 
tionary proposition to abolish two- thirds of the debt-paying money of the 
Nation the Tribune lost no time in combating and pointing out its de- 
structive consequences to the business interests of the people. Shortly 
after committing himself to this evil scheme, Secretary Sherman an- 
nounced himself as a candidate for President. How could the Tribune 
look with favor upon his candidacy while he was advocating such a fiscal 
scheme ? It believes that, if he were running for President on that 
greenback and silver demonetization issue, he would be overwhelmingly 
defeated in every State between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains. 

For these reasons it does not regard him as an available candidate for 
the Republican party to nominate for President, and it has the independ- 
ence to say so, and none of its readers will think any the less of the Tri- 
bune for its frankness, whether they all agree with its conclusions or not. 
The opposition of the Tribune to Mr. Sherman as a Presidential candidate 
is, therefore, not ''personal," and has not a particle of office brokerage 
in it, but is based solely and exclusively upon his unavailability by rea- 
son of his destructive hostility to all the legal-tender money in the nation 
except gold. It does not believe that it would be safe or prudent to arm 
such a man with the powers and patronage of the Presidency to enforce 
his sweeping contraction policy upon the country. 



JAMES G. BLAINE, 

"THAT LEADER OF LEADERS.' 



SPEECH OF ROBERT G. INGERSOL, OF ILLINOIS, IN THE 
REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1876. 



The Repnblicans of the United States demand as their leader in the great contest ot 
1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well-known and approved 
political opinions. They demand a statesman. They demand a reformer after, as well 
as before, the election. They demand a politician in the highest, broadest, and best 
sense — a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man acquainted with public 
affairs, with the wants of the people, with not only the requirements of the hour, but 
with the demands of the fature. They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the 
relations of this Government to the other nations of the earth. They demand a man 
well versed in the powers, duties, and prerogatives of each and every department of this . 
Government. They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the financial honor of 
the United States; one who knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid 
through the prosperity of this people ; one who knows enough to know that all the finan- 
cial theories in the world cannot redeem a single dollar ; one who knows enough to know 
that all the money must be made, not by law, but by labor ; one who knows enough to 
know that the people of the United States have the industry to make the money and 
the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it. 

The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and 
resumption, when they come, must come tosrether ; that when they come they will come 
hand in hand through the golden harvest fields; hand in hand by the whirling spindles 
and the turning wheels ; hand in hand past the open furnace doors ; hand in hand by 
the flaming forges ; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire, greeted and 
grasped by the countless sons of toil. 

This money has to be dug out of the earth. You cannot make it by passing resolutions 
in a political convention. 

The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this Government 
should protect every citizen at home and abroad ; who knows that any government that 
will not defend its defenders, and protect its protectors, is a disgrace to the map of the 
world. They demand a man who believes in the eternal separation and divorcement of 
church and school. They demand a man whose political reputation is spotless as a star ; 
but they do not demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of moral character 
signed by a confederate congress. The man who has, in full, heaped, and rounded meas- 
ure, all these splendid qualifications, is the present grand and gallant leader of the 
Republican party — James G. Blaine. 

Our country, crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements of its first century, 
asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of her future ; asks for a man who has 
the audacity of genius ; asks for a man who has the grandest combination of heart, oon- 
scienoe, and brain beneath her flag — such a man is James G. Blaine, 
^^or the Republican host, led by this intrepid man, there can be no defeat 



8 



This ifl a grand year— a year filled with the recollections of the Revolntion ; filled with 
prond and tender memories of the past ; with the sacred legends of liberty — a year in 
which the sons of freedom will drink from the fonntains of euthnsiasm — a year in which 
the people call for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the 
field — a year in which they call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the 
tongue of slander ; for the man who has snatched the mask of Democracy firom the hid- 
eous face of rebellion ; for the man who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the 
arena of debate and challenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat. 

Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls 
of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen 
foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor. For the Re- 
publican party to desert this gallant leader now is as though an army should desert their 
general upon the field of battle. 

James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred standard of 
the Republican party. I call it sacred, because no human being can stand beneath its 
folds without becoming and without remaining free. 

Gentlemen of the Convention : In the name of the great Republic, the only Republic 
that ever existed upon this earth ; in the name of all her defenders and of all her sup- 
porters ; in the name of all her soldiers living ; in the name of all her soldiers dead upon 
the field of battle, and in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine 
at Andersonville and Libby, whose sufferings he so vividly remembers, Illinois — Illinois 
nominates for the next President of this country that prince of parliamentarians, that 
leader of leaders, James G. Blaine. 



Events have now so matured as to enable men'of deliberate judgment to foresee to some 
extent the result at Chicago, and every thing indicates the fact that either Blaine or Grant 
will be the nominee, unless, by stubborn resistance to the wiU and demand of the people, 
a^dark horse may be forced into the nomination, a dangerous thing to undertake, and 
liable to result in rout and disaster before the people. 

Sherman as a candidate has developed so little strength any where, as to be practically 
out of the race. His only considerable following is confined to Ohio, where the State 
will at least be divided between him and Blaine, with perhaps the greater part to Blaine, 
and possibly a fractional part to Grant. This being all that Mr. Sherman can reasonably 
hope for in Ohio, and there being no tangible support for htm in any other State, we re- 
peat that he is practically out of the race, and now every thing points to the conclusion 
that either Grant or Blaine will be the nominee and candidate of the Republican party. 
Which shall it be ? With Blaine, for whom the people of every Republican State in the 
Union are enthusiastically anxious, there could be no sort of doubt of a glorious and 
triumphant success. There would be no differences to adjust, no resistance to be met 
and quieted. All the party would join in his earnest, enthusiastic support, and we would 
go on to victory. With General Grant aU the objections to a third term would be urged ; 
and the number who so object are so considerable and respectable as to render the result 
in his case, at least, doubtful, so that it seems to us that wisdom would dictate an avoid- 
ance of all danger, by the nomination of a leader who would bring the entire party to 
his support, and that man we believe to be James G. Blaine. 



if f 



